


One of the Pack

by palladionaigis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palladionaigis/pseuds/palladionaigis
Summary: Something was out there, murdering the animals. It certainly wasn't the wolves, though that's who the humans are chasing and blaming. They'd all been killed years ago... all save for one, and the feral child that ran with them. What's left of the fragmented pack is now tasked with chasing down what is responsible for the threat to their territory.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I tend to get very enthusiastic over small things that might seem silly to most, and a lot of times I get ideas out of these situations that hound me until I elaborate and turn it into something.
> 
> This particular something is a small oneshot inspired by my Halloween costume this last year. I wore tattered, dirty, and bloodstained clothes. Makeup made me look dirty and gruff, as though I was a feral animal. My most prized possession is a soft mount taxidermy wolf, so of course I got imagining about how it would be to be raised with wolves. So here is this short piece.

Humans, she knows, are selfish.

All bundled up in their warm beds with fires going in the dead of winter, what they call “slaving” over hot stoves to feed their families while she curls up, knowing if she falls asleep alone she will die from the cold, children in their beds having nightmares about the livestock being killed by the apex predator… which isn’t even the wolf lying to her right. His golden-brown eyes glance over at her and he tilts his head.

He’s learned to read human expressions very well, though many times his counterpart looks more wolf than human. Her heritage betrays her, and as far as he is concerned, he is the same as she and vice versa. He whines slightly and his ears tilt back. He can see that she’s shivering. Her weak human form is a recipe for disaster in a season like this one. This is the time of night when whatever monster lurks in the woods starts on its journey towards town. The lights in the windows flicker out as the fires die, the animals slowly go to sleep in their pens (which aren’t the least bit of protection against whatever is out there), and her pack-brother diligently keeps watch as she sleeps. While she is more nocturnal than she once was, she still required rest, especially after running from the apex predator for more than two hours earlier today on their way back to their den.

She pulls at her tattered cloak. Even the faded red of the fabric is only still vibrant because of the blood that decorates its threads. Something about this whole situation is an odd sense of deja-vu, not especially surprising given this is their ritual. Just recently she used the sharp edge of a rock to chop off the long lengths of her hair. It was getting matted and hard to groom. She snuffs, curling up into a ball. She has no name here, nor does he. They are one being, one pack - the Alpha male and Alpha female. Though she is human. He too rests, leaning over the rocky ground to groom her. He licks her hair until it’s sticking up in three different directions and she yaps at him, making a pass for his muzzle, growling in warning.

He rescued her many years ago from the hands of a cruel old woman who beat her daily because her son had the audacity to keep his bastard child, daughter of a no-good and a prostitute, conceived and born out of wedlock. Days she’d spend locked in the barn with the pigs, smelling of dirt and hay, hardly old enough to walk. The pack of wolves had wandered into the village very late one night and it had so happened that this barn was on the outskirts of the small town, and all the pigs fell victim until he, the Alpha, had laid his eyes on the child. A human pup, bloody and bruised, he could smell the scars on her skin - and he sniffed her, grabbed her by the remaining threads of whatever clothing still covered her, and dragged her limp little body away. As he walked, he realized the taste in his mouth was of pig feces and mud. This was the state the human whelp had been living in. The humans even tortured their own.

The old woman had lamented at the loss of her livestock but rejoiced at the loss of the parasite that she’d been saddled with, but all the while, her injuries healed only to be replaced by scratches and nips as she rolled around, rough housing with the other pups in the pack. She grew up among them, spoke in their animal tongue, and slowly rose through the ranks, running on all fours when danger called and howling with the rest of her family.

The village had killed all the wolves half a year ago now. As soon as the slaughter started, they hunted the nocturnal pack and she and the human were the only two who made it out. They’d thrown burning sticks into their habitat, shot flaming arrows into the trees surrounding them, thrown gunpowder bombs into their den, and used their swords and knives to murder all but the two of them, who made it out with some burns and she an arrow in her upper arm, which still sometimes pained her if they ran for too long without taking a break.

Begrudgingly, she let him continue to lick at her hairline, and though she still growled from low in her chest, soon it was replaced by soft breaths as she curled up beside him, tucking her face into his broad neck and soft fur. The dull glow of the moon barely illuminated their new den, peeking through the branches that made up the ceiling of the dugout home they’d made for themselves. This pack ended with them, but either of them would be damned if they let the humans continue like this. They would expose the apex predator, and when it was dead and this was all over, they’d find another land to call their own, somewhere deep in the mountains where they could live peacefully.


End file.
